That night, Roxy sat beside Tay with Maya's phone placed between them, the dim light of the room casting long shadows on the wall. The silence felt heavy, broken only by the faint clicking of keys as Tay worked to unlock the device. With every passing second, Roxy's heart pounded harder, as if the truth itself was waiting behind the screen.
"You're sure about this?" Tay asked quietly, his voice uncertain. Roxy stared at the phone without blinking. "No," he replied honestly. "But I don't have a choice." When the phone finally unlocked, messages flooded the display—normal conversations with friends, classmates, casual chats that revealed nothing unusual. At first glance, everything seemed ordinary. But then one contact caught Roxy's attention. There was no name saved, only a number. The call logs showed frequent late-night conversations, and several chats had been deleted. The pattern was too deliberate to ignore.
"Trace it," Roxy said firmly.
Tay hesitated for a moment before typing again, his expression slowly changing as the information appeared. "It belongs to her best friend," he said in a low voice. A cold wave passed through Roxy's body. The same girl who had cried in front of him. The same girl who claimed she knew nothing beyond the tragic narrative everyone repeated. If she was innocent, why were the conversations erased? What was she hiding? The questions refused to quiet down.
The next day, Roxy returned to the college, but this time he did not let anger guide him. He walked through the corridors calmly, observing everything and everyone. Whispers followed him wherever he went. Students avoided his gaze, conversations stopped when he passed by, and from across the hallway, the teacher he had slapped watched him with visible discomfort. Something in their behavior confirmed his suspicion—fear was spreading. That evening, just as Roxy was replaying the details in his mind, his phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number. "Stop digging." His pulse quickened. Before he could react, another message appeared.
"Some truths are buried for a reason."
For a moment, fear tried to enter his thoughts, but anger crushed it instantly. His fingers moved without hesitation.
"Then I will dig deeper," he replied.
He no longer cared who was watching. Later that night, Tay sent him a recovered file—a partially restored video extracted from Maya's phone. The screen flickered as it began to play, the quality unstable but clear enough to understand. Maya appeared on the screen, her face tear-streaked, her voice trembling.
The camera angle was uneven, as if it had been set carelessly. In the background, a male voice laughed—a sound so cold it made Roxy's hands shake uncontrollably. Rage and helplessness collided inside him as he forced himself to keep watching. Then the camera shifted slightly, just for a second, revealing the mirror behind Maya. In that reflection, faint but undeniable, stood another figure.
It was not just her boyfriend in the room. There was someone else.
The image was blurred, but something about the posture, the silhouette, felt disturbingly familiar. Roxy paused the video and zoomed in, his breathing growing heavier. His blood ran cold as recognition slowly settled in. The outline resembled the same man from the classroom—the teacher who had mocked her, the one who pretended indifference.
This was no longer a story of shame or impulsive despair. This was not a private tragedy born from humiliation. It was orchestrated. A setup. A calculated performance designed to destroy her and silence her forever. Maya had not been alone in that room, and she had not been surrounded by innocence. She had been trapped among predators hiding behind respectability.
Roxy leaned back in his chair, his mind sharper than it had ever been. The pieces were aligning, forming a picture darker than he had imagined.
If they believed fear would silence him, they were mistaken. If they believed the truth would remain buried beneath gossip and blame, they underestimated him. The fragments were no longer scattered. They were forming a pattern.
And Roxy was ready to step into whatever darkness waited ahead, no matter the cost.